Artist Sheela Gowda on how she found inspiration at a construction site

One of India’s most important contemporary artists, Sheela Gowda on her latest exhibition

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Image: Sheela Gowda, installation view at Ikon Gallery (2017)

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Image: Sheela Gowda, installation view at Ikon Gallery (2017)

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Image: Sheela Gowda, installation view at Ikon Gallery (2017)

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Image: Sheela Gowda, installation view at Ikon Gallery (2017)

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Image: Sheela Gowda, installation view at Ikon Gallery (2017)

A chance encounter with a bandli factory in Bengaluru led Sheela Gowda to contemplate not just the materiality of this peculiarly Indian vessel ubiquitous to construction sites across the country, but its form that speaks of “the body, its capacity and the economy of labour as well as of time.” Her ongoing show at Ikon in Birmingham features a new installation comprising bandlis and the sheets from which they emerged that lean against the gallery walls like stencils. Gowda spoke to Vogue India about her relationship with her home city, her artistic practice and her fascination with the bandli.

Would you describe the city of Bengaluru as your muse?Having lived in Bangalore for about 45 years my response to it does not need to be a consciously investigative one. Cultural nuances are understandable to me, as is the economic reality of daily life as I observe it. However, these realities do not translate into art without a larger thinking; it needs a language, a historical context, an individual process of framing questions for oneself to begin an artwork. It might be that I find a material that excites me whilst looking for another. I don’t wander the city looking for materials as such. It is one of those moments when a certain need within me finds resonance in what I find.

What happens to your works when they travel across a continuum of spaces?When I make new sculptural installations there is a space which is proposed, discussed and determined. In the case of a new work being produced I do consider the scale and nature of the space. A large space does not necessarily mean a big installation should occupy the entire area. The work needs to have enough flexibility to be enlarged or condensed. I guess this is what excites me about installing the same work in another space. Its elements and their conceptual weight remains, but the emphasis within can change in relation to the space. The work does not need the specificity of a place to be articulate. It is therefore not site specific. From a practical point of view, like most artists, I like to get a sense of the volume of a room. In the case of Ikon I had to judge these from photographs and plans. The Ikon galleries on the second floor are not neutral white cube spaces; the rooms have strong architectural features that are quite in contrast to the language of my works. It was a challenge to work with it, but, sometimes, unexpected relationships and ideas develop during the process of installing.

Tell us about your incorporation of the bandli in your recent work?In the large new installation at the Ikon titled What Yet Remains, I have taken the bandli as a point of departure. Bandli is a Kannada (my mother tongue) word for the bowls used to carry sand, cement or concrete slurry at construction sites. It is a ubiquitous object whose form I have always been attracted to but had never seen as being central to a large installation.

The bandli belongs to the best of Indian design, and as a tool it says a lot about society. It could, for example, never be a European tool. In Europe the wheelbarrow, the counter tool to the bandli, speaks about how to stress the limits of manpower, however dependent it is on the person pushing it. The bandli and the wheelbarrow have two completely different concepts of efficiency. The wheelbarrow is more like a basic machine simulating a mule, while the bandli seems to grow together with the worker lifting it onto their head.

In my earlier practice I have used black tar sheets made from flattened drums. So, chancing upon coloured sheets piled beside a small street, I entered a workshop where the bandli was in ‘production’—handmade. It was a process that was fascinating as were the changes in forms that the sheets went through. Each sheet was cut by hand into eight flat circular pieces. These were then pressed in hand-operated machines and their edges were then hammered and folded.

The bandli form speaks of the body, its capacity, and the economy of labour as well as of time. Its modernist forms seem to be in contrast to other social realities, made visible by foregrounding the process as evidence as well as in the aesthetics of poor materials.

What forms the crux of your present artistic practice?There are no beginnings and ends to ones artistic practice. There is always an overlap and new directions evolve from within these layers. In India the economic, cultural, religious and the political are very glaringly interlinked. I am looking for forms to address these issues in my work. The present political scene in India is particularly complex and alarming; it challenges our understanding of what a creative person’s role or method is. It challenges the notion of what art should or can be. These are issues that are resonating in my mind. Perhaps my work may need to take a very different direction for these very reasons.

Sheela Gowda’s new works are on exhibit at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK, till September 3, 2017. Ikon-gallery.org